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a stronger grip on the succeeding generations than any other class, except the founders of religions. The forgetfulness of the generations laughs to scorn the contemporary judg ments of mankind. The excellent Southey was as sure of lasting fame as was Shakspere when he wrote,

"Not marble nor the gilded monuments

Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme."

If he had ever doubted, Landor would have braced his failing heart. But Emerson, writing of his visit to Wordsworth, says: "He pestered me with Southey. Who's Southey?" He was a man whose life was a true poem and his best title to the recollection of mankind, So it has been with many thousands who imagined theirs to be immortal names. If a place in the Biographical Dictionary were the sign of fame, even then how few the famous ones would be! How few the immortals, if such immortality were all. Still, at the best, it is a very real and noble immortality. We cannot tell how much it is to those who strove for it 'mid dust and heat, or forgot themselves into its splendor. But it is much to us. It enlarges our companionship. It gives to us some of our rarest hours.

"Ever their phantoms arise before us,
Our loftier brothers, but one in blood,
At bed and table they lord it o'er us

With looks of beauty and words of good."

“If a man die, shall he live again?" Another voice that answers, Yes, is that of Influence. It may be easily mistaken for the voice of Fame. Sometimes the two are blended into one. But, while fame is for the few, influence is for the many. May we not say, It is for all? "No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself." goes along a certain influence. The fame of the warrior incites to warlike deeds, the fame of the saint to things saintly. The fame of the discoverers makes men Columbuses; the fame of the inventors will not let young men sleep.

With all fame there

When literary fame has kept alive the author's book, then his influence is greatly, it may be immeasurably, enhanced. But in this field there may be world-wide influence without one leaf of fame. What influence the Psalms of the Old Testament, the Gospels of the New, have had on human life! But their authors have no fame. Can there be fame without a name? And we do not know who wrote the Psalms (not in a single instance), nor who wrote the Gospels. But the immortality of influence is not alone for those who have written some great thing or painted some great picture or carved a Venus of Melos, and scorned to blot or mar it with a name. It is for millions who have done no great or famous thing. Fathers and mothers live before their children lives that are all integrity and purity and blamelessness and gentleness and peace. They pass away; and their children remember all the gracious beauty of their lives, of which, perhaps, they were too little conscious when they might have done something to soothe and heal and bless their aching hearts, and they love to speak of them to their children in serene and quiet hours. So they become "the sweet presence of a good diffused." The warning word which fell unheeded from their lips, in some dim place of memory and tears, attains to life and power.

But, while for the few the immortality of influence may renew itself from age to age, for the many it is only a brief extension of their mortal life. It is a pebble cast into a silent pool. Fainter and fainter from the centre grow the undulations, and then wholly fade away. It is a torch that goes from hand to hand. At each exchange it shows a lessening flame, and at length it quite goes out.

As it is easy to confound the voice of Fame with that of Influence, so it is easy to confound the voice of Influence with that of Affection, which also answers, Yes, to our great question. It is a choral answer in which blend the voices of many little children with those of older folk. The immortality of affection, like that of influence, is not generally of indefinite continuance. The immortality of influence

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can be indefinitely prolonged when the influence is embodied in some great book or some just law, or some great discovery or invention. By the same means the immortality of affection can be indefinitely prolonged. There are many of old time and modern date "whom not having seen we love." Sometimes the art of the biographer helps us mightily to this result, he makes so real the personality of the man or woman he presents to our imagination. The quality of the personality has much to do with it. There are men of history and literature whom we admire and honor and revere, but whom somehow we do not love. Washington is one of these, and Channing is another. But we love Abraham Lincoln; we love Theodore Parker; we love Charles Lamb; and Thackeray, oh, how much! and Longfellow aud Curtis; and Lydia Maria Child. And still the real Valhalla of affection is mainly populous for each individual with those whom he has personally known and loved. In our Father's house are many mansions. We have, each one of us, a little heaven of our own inhabited by dear ones whom we have known and loved, with whom we love to draw apart in our best hours, or when we are tired and troubled, and it is good to seem to feel their hands upon our foreheads and to seem to hear their well-remembered tones. This heaven of affection is pre-eminently the children's heaven. This immortality is theirs, the children's who have gone away from us. They have no fame. Strictly speaking, they have no influence. But how the well-springs of affection bubble where they touched the earth! The time they stayed with us in their bright tabernacles of soft gleaming flesh is no measure of the afterlife they live in our affectionate remembrance. In the pure heaven of many a fond mother's heart there lives some little one whose earthly life was only a few months long. I know of one who only for a few short hours made piteous wail, and then lapsed into silence; and she to whom he came kept him in mind continually, saw what he might have been in every young man's face, and drew all young men to her

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